General Motors has finally come out and given everyone an official work on the new small car after the Chevrolet Aveo U-VA. The Chevrolet Spark, which is the updated Matiz was going to be launched last year but due to some problems it wasn’t possible. This time the company is sure that they will be able to give a successful launch to the Chevy Spark in India around April-May.
The Company is doing pretty well and the Chevrolet Aveo has helped the company as it has firmly established itself better than the Fiesta or even Tata Indigo. The Chevy Spark could be priced around 4lacs but this is not official yet. We will have to wait and see what happens next.
Chevrolet January 10th 2007
Hyundai Motors will pass on the VAT benifit that they will receive from the Government to the consumers. This is going to be only a small amount but still its being done for some reason. Earlier a tax of 12.6 percent was paid as local sales tax which will be replaced now by 12.5% flat VAT charged to everyone. The 1% turnover tax will also not be levyied on the carmaker.
This percentage price cut will reduce the prices of the Santro XL by Rs. 2,000, the Hyundai Getz GLS by Rs. 3,000. The maximum price cut is obviously with the Sonata which is the highest priced car from Hyundai. Sonata prices will be reduced in Tamil Nadu by Rs. 10,000.
Honda Siel Cars issued a press statement last week that they would be increasing the prices of their cars from the first week of January.
“There has been pressure from increased input costs and the company has decided to hike prices across all the production models between 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent by next week,” a Honda official said.
The prices of the Honda City, Honda Civic and the Honda Accord would be raised but they made it clear that they would not be tinkering with the price tag on the Honda CR-V.
Honda are also set to introduce their new version of the Honda Accord this month, so it seems a bit odd that they would hike the price of the older model.
Honda, India January 2nd 2007
General Motors India today announced that it has made a 19% (YoY, Year on Year) plus sales growth in the last month of 2006. They have issued a figure of 2,583 units sold in December 06′, versus the 2,163 figure last year.
GM claim to have sold 1,517 Chev Taveras and almost half the number of Chevrolet Aveos despite being the new kid on the block. The Optra sales were not too impressive with only 307 units sold this last month.
In 2006, GM has come out with two new models this past year which is the hit Chevrolet Aveo over the Ford Fiesta and the Chevrolet SRV which has not sold too many units but have got good reviews.
The company is optimistic about the next year with competition coming in from the likes of Mahindra and Mahindra partnering with Renault, the European carmaker. GM feel that they have got an ace up their sleeve with the new Chevrolet Aveo UVA.
The Aveo U-VA is the new hatch back and could be good competition to the likes to Hyundai Getz and the Maruti Swift.
They also have a new manufacturing unit opening up in Talegaon plus they have increased the capacity of their Halol plant to 85k units. The Talegaon plant is due to start latest by 2008.
